Wednesday, November 4, 2009

I'm not sure if you're lazy, or stupid, or too busy, or all of the above.

I appreciate you sending Mrs. Oldlady to me. Her symptoms certainly were concerning for a TIA, so I ordered a work-up.

Her MRI yesterday showed a small right brain stroke, while the MRA showed a critically narrowed right carotid artery.

I saw her urgently this morning, and set up plans to change her medications and to see a vascular surgeon. After she left I quickly typed up a letter to you summarizing my plan. Since I believe in good communication, I faxed over all the MRI/MRA reports with my letter.

I therefore found it comical that about an hour after I faxed it over, your office immediately faxed the MRI report AND MY OWN NOTES back to me, with your handwriting on the report saying "HAS HAD STROKE! GET HER INTO A NEUROLOGIST ASAP!"

Dear Dr. Grumpy,Love your blog, read it daily. I work as a Unit Secretary in a busy cardiac unit at a hospital. I can tell you it is the NORM--Dr.'s don't bother to read each other's notes or orders. I'll be going into work in a few hours. I can guarantee you that there will be charts with orders from three different doctors 'consulting' on a patient...with their orders written on the same page no less...and they will say the same thing. One might say order 'cbc', another 'complete blood count'. It really makes me wonder sometimes...if they can't pay attention to such simple details, how did they make it through Med School?(Rhetorical question)Keep up the great work.

Welcome to my whining!

This blog is entirely for entertainment purposes. All posts about patients may be fictional, or be my experience, or were submitted by a reader, or any combination of the above. Factual statements may or may not be accurate.

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